A note on how we know what we know and what we don ' t know

A major problem in public discourse is what I call the reification of data. The information we have about social facts, economics, public health -- the statistics that come out of CDC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, academic research -- are not identical with reality. But the people who bandy them about seldom reflect on where they come from, or even think to ask. Regarding HIV specifically, in the United States we depend on the HIV surveillance system. Like many other infectious diseases, HIV is reportable. When someone tests positive, and gets a positive  confirmation test, the entity that does the test has to report it to the state. They are required to ask the person certain questions: demographic information, zip code of residence, and whether they have engaged in specific risk behaviors for HIV transmission: male-to-male sex, injection drug use, heterosexual sex. Receipt of blood products used to be an issue but it isn ' t any more. But the system doesn ' t have any more detail than that. It doesn ' t tell us anything about the context, for example whether any of this might have happened in prison, whether the person is a sex worker or patronizes sex workers, anything more than those very general categories. It may also be that a person does not tell the truth about one thing or another. This information is reported to the state health department, which produces regular statistical reports, and also passes the information on to CDC, wh...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs